


You Tried to Change the Ending, Peter Losing Wendy

by catlike



Series: Stardust and Story Books (A Collection of Whouffle and Whouffaldi Fairy Tale Retelling One-Shots) [5]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005), Peter Pan & Related Fandoms, Peter Pan - J. M. Barrie
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Alternate Universe - Peter Pan Fusion, Angst, F/M, Fairy Tale Elements, Fairy Tale Retellings, Fairy Tale Style, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Mutual Pining, Peter Pan References, Pining, and straight on til morning, second star to the right, souffez - Freeform, whouffaldi, whouffle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:53:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25500922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catlike/pseuds/catlike
Summary: The man made of stars stands on Clara’s windowsill, his silhouette lit up by the moonlight, and she thinks that seeing him is like having an epiphany or remembering a long-forgotten dream, with the way she can see the galaxy in his eyes and sense the magic that swirls around him and scatters silver stars across his skin.“You’ve been telling fairy tales,” he tells her, “but how would you like to be living in one instead?”A Peter Pan inspired look at Eleven/Clara and Twelve/Clara.
Relationships: Eleventh Doctor & Clara Oswin Oswald, Eleventh Doctor/Clara Oswin Oswald, The Doctor & Clara Oswin Oswald, The Doctor (Doctor Who)/Clara Oswin Oswald, Twelfth Doctor & Clara Oswin Oswald, Twelfth Doctor/Clara Oswin Oswald
Series: Stardust and Story Books (A Collection of Whouffle and Whouffaldi Fairy Tale Retelling One-Shots) [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1692124
Comments: 24
Kudos: 76





	You Tried to Change the Ending, Peter Losing Wendy

It starts with a story.

“Is this one of your true stories, Clara?” Franny, the girl she’s nannying asks as she sits in the nursery. “Your definitely true ones?”

Skepticism laces that sentence, but Clara laughs, like there’s secrets she still hasn’t told, and things that Franny will never know. 

“All my stories are true,” Clara tells her.

(And Clara can see why Franny and her brother Digby don’t quite believe her. She tells them stories of a man made of stars called the Doctor, whose youthful face would never betray the fact that he’s thousands and thousands of years old, that he’s lived through the rise and fall of empires and has swung on stars and seen whole universes freeze and entire galaxies burn.)

“The Doctor sounds like Peter Pan,” she overhears Digby say to his sister. “Maybe Clara’s really just Wendy who grew up.”

“Don’t be silly, she can’t be Wendy. Peter Pan’s just a made-up story,” Franny retorts, but even as she chides him, she sounds unsure, like she’s thinking that it would actually explain a lot of things about their peculiar nanny.

“Once upon a time, there was a man who lived on a cloud in the sky,” Clara tells them, starting her story. “And all he does, all day every day, is to stop all the children in the world from ever having bad dreams...”

Clara doesn’t quite know how she knows the story. She thinks perhaps she was born knowing it. It’s just always been there, spinning out in the back of her mind, singing out a familiar tune. She’s never met the Doctor before, but she knows - somehow, she _knows_ \- that he is as sure a thing as stars in the sky or waves in the sea. He is something real, something tangible. 

And maybe, maybe that’s why she’s not surprised when he actually shows up one night.

#

The man made of stars stands on her windowsill, his silhouette lit up by the moonlight, and Clara has never seen him in her life, but she knows who he is instantly, as if she’s remembering him from a story that she’s somehow already lived, like somehow all this has happened before.

(And seeing him is like having an epiphany, or remembering a long-forgotten dream, except he’s better than she dreamt. She can see the galaxy in his eyes, sense the magic that swirls around him, swallows him and scatters silver stars across his skin.)

“I came because of your fairy tales,” he says, almost sheepishly, ducking his head, his eyes catching hers in the shadowy half-light. “I’ve been listening to them every night, I’ve been all across time and space, heard hundreds of stories, but yours are the best.”

Clara grins, “Of course you think they’re the best. They’re all about you, you know.”

The man frowns, “We haven’t met.”

“We have now,” Clara replies. 

He stops, studies her, like he’s looking for an answer to a silent question. And then he smiles, lighting up the night.

“You’ve been telling fairy tales,” he tells her, “how would you like to be living in one instead?”

#

He’s got a mischievous grin and pale green eyes and when he whispers her name, she gets shivers down her spine.

“There it is, Clara,” he says, pointing to a spot in the sky. “Second star to the right, and straight on til morning.”

(He is pointing toward some sort of softly burning star. Akhatan, she thinks he said. But there’s a planet in orbit next to it, and she can see it shine even from where she stands.)

“Can we get a closer look?” she asks.

“Come on,” he says, grinning and taking her hand, “I’ll show you Neverland.”

#

One time, when Clara enters the TARDIS, she finds him excitedly waiting for her.

He entwines his fingers with hers, pulls her toward the TARDIS console, and she laughs, asks, “What’s the occasion?”

He smiles at her, contagious giddiness coming off him in waves, pulling her under and making her smile.

“Today,” he says, “I’m teaching you to fly.”

Clara shakes her head at his ridiculousness, pretends she’s not going breathless as he smiles at her, “Fly?”

He gently guides her hand to a console lever, the tips of his fingers pressed onto the backs of hers, “Fly the TARDIS.”

Clara wrinkles her nose, “I’d be too nervous to. She doesn’t like me.”

“No, don’t be nervous,” he says flapping his hand that’s not resting on hers, “just...just think of a happy thought instead.”

Clara turns her head and raises an eyebrow up at him, but the thing is, his eyes look so open and honest and earnest.

(Always surprising her, this man made of stars.)

“A happy thought,” Clara repeats.

“Yes,” he says, and then he smiles at her, soft and star-dusted. “Got one?”

 _You,_ she thinks as she nods. _You are my happy thought. Always have been, always will be._

“Alright then,” he says, moving behind her, arms guiding hers to the glowing buttons and levers, and in her ear he whispers, “Ready to fly, Wendy?”

(She thinks she already is.)

#

The last clear thing Clara remembers is being in the time stream, of falling asleep in his arms. Everything after that is darkness and shadow, a hazy blur of silhouettes. She dreams that she’s walking the plank, being swallowed up by the spinning blue sea of his time stream. She thinks she sleeps for days, drifting in and out of dreams.

The only thing she’s sure of is that he never leaves her. She can sense him by her side through it all, even when she can’t see him; can hear the sound of his voice murmuring indistinct lullabies and feel his fingers delicately carding through her hair as he assures her he’s there. 

And now she wakes in darkness, after who knows how long, in a bed that doesn’t belong to her in some newly unforgotten room on the TARDIS. She has no idea who’s room it is - or used to be - but she sees a sewing kit on the nightstand, and a ripped out cross-word puzzle that will forever remain untouched, and all she knows is that it isn’t hers.

Clara’s head feels better, clearer, as she takes in the room, and then her eyes land on the Doctor, and she can’t help but smile.

He’s slumped asleep against the bed, the pads of his fingers pressed atop the blankets on her leg, as if to assure himself, even in his slumber, that she’s there. 

And the thing is: she loves him. Loves him like she’s never loved anyone before in all her life. What they have spans time and space, encompasses and eclipses the universe, has survived through a trip into and out of his time stream and throughout all of her other lives. She has died for him a million times, and she’d die for him a million more. 

But Clara has faced enough new terrain for now, feels too exhausted to try to figure out exactly what they are, thinks maybe there are no words for what their relationship is. Her eyes land on the sewing kit on the nightstand, and she finds herself remembering one of her favorite childhood stories; remembering an adventurous girl who once gave an ageless, clever boy a thimble and told him it was a kiss.

So Clara plucks a small, silver thimble from the sewing kit, carefully reaches over to his still sleeping form and presses it into his palm, enclosing his fingers around it, wrapping her hand over his. She knows that he’s likely to wake and think that she’s delusional from her trip into his time stream, that the time winds have temporarily addled her mind for leaving the thimble in his hand.

But, surely, she thinks, for someone who has lived as long as he has, he must’ve - at some point in one of his lives - read Peter Pan. 

So she hopes that, one day, he’ll understand.

#

Peter Pan has grown old, and he’s taken her to a planet where it snows.

And Peter Pan is dying.

“To die,” he tells her, “will be an awfully big adventure.”

“ _No,”_ Clara says. “Not yet.”

#

(And Wendy saves Peter Pan. Because he thinks that everything ends, that there are rules he can’t bend, that this and he are finite. But he’s wrong.

Wendy knows he’s _infinite_.)

#

Though he’ll keep living, this version - her version - of Peter Pan is dying, and Clara wants to reach out for him, but she can’t: he’s burning golden, the glow around him nearly swallowing him whole. He automatically starts to step toward her, to reach out for her too, but then he stops himself, remembers he can’t let his gold fire burn her.

He doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t need to, the way he’s looking at her is worth a myriad of words.

 _I love you_ , his eyes tell her. _I’ve loved you in this life, and I’ll love you in my next one. There’s not a universe in existence where any version of me could ever not love you._

And then, careful not to touch her, he holds his hand out, like he wants to give her something, so she cups her hands in the air underneath his, careful to keep away as he drops something into them.

And then he’s gone, and Clara looks down to see the silver thimble she once gave him nestled safely in her palms.

And a single thought echoes around in her mind:

_He just kissed her goodbye._

#

This next version of Peter Pan looks older, feels younger. Sounds harsher, but falls for her harder. And there’s a million ways Clara’s man made of stars has changed, but the important things remain: He still loves her, and she loves him.

Too bad they’re terrible at telling each other that.

#

Clara, ironically, for being an English teacher who explains the meaning of words and emotions expressed by writers to her students every day, finds that she’s not very good at expressing her own emotions.

She thinks maybe she should say something, maybe she should tell him that it’s him she loves, that it’s still him and will always be him. That he’s her happy thought and that hasn’t changed despite his face doing so.

But they end up in spats and being stiff around each other more often than not, and if she’s an English teacher who’s ironically bad with words, he’s even worse.

So she leaves him the thimble he gave her on the TARDIS console, hoping he’ll understand, and neither one of them ever mention it.

#

The thing is, Wendy always had to finish growing up. Her ending was never going to be with Peter.

Clara just didn’t think growing up would hurt so much.

But as she sits in a cafe, listening to the Doctor tell her that he’s found Gallifrey, she knows she’d been wrong. If this is growing up, then it _hurts_ , hurts so terribly it stings to even breathe. It is an ache, throbbing and raw, like she can feel herself being hollowed out, like a black hole is spreading out through her soul.

But she loves him. Loves him so much she would do anything for him. Which is why she lies like she does.

“Danny and I will be fine,” she tells him, ignoring the way it feels like she’s bleeding out on the bench. “Go back home to Neverland, Peter Pan.”

Growing up, in this moment, means falsehoods and heartbreak, but she’d rather break her own heart in half over and over and over again than break his. So she hugs him and then watches him disappear in his TARDIS. And what she doesn’t know yet is:

He only disappears because he’d rather carve out his own two beating hearts than ever make her unhappy.

#

Clara finds the thimble in her coat pocket later that day.

She stares at it, realizing he must’ve slipped it in her pocket as they hugged, realizing that once again he’d given her a kiss goodbye.

And that’s when she finally allows herself to break down and cry.

#

It’s the middle of the night, and he is standing in her bedroom, lit up from the glow of the moon.

(And Clara remembers this story, remembers how it always starts like this no matter how his faces change.)

“I had a dream that I was terrible with time,” he tells her. “That I came back too late, missed too many years with you.”

Clara studies him, wishing she could be surprised. But she’s not, not really. This is how the story goes. Peter doesn’t come back for Wendy in time.

...Or does he?

“The TARDIS is outside,” the Doctor tells her as she sits up in bed and pulls on a robe.

“So?” she asks, her eyes pinned on his, begging the story to begin again. 

(And it does.)

“So all of time and space is sitting out there,” he says. “Please, don’t even argue.”

She doesn’t; she kisses him instead, thinks they’ve outgrown the need for thimbles.

And they fly away to Neverland.

#

The fairy tale starts ending on Trap Street. They’re dealing with Ashildr and Rigsy and ravens of death, and Clara takes the chronolock without even being scared.

She should be. Oh, how she should be. But she doesn’t know it, in that moment, she’s looking at Ashildr and thinking about a certain fairy from a very old novel she read so long ago. You see, she remembers how the fairy tried to get the lost boys to shoot down Wendy by calling her a bird.

Most importantly, she remembers that Peter saved Wendy.

(But her life is not a book, and this is not Peter Pan.)

#

She remembers that fact a little too late, remembers it as she stands in the middle of Trap Street with the Doctor behind her, and the raven ahead.

All those years ago, flying off with this mad, magical man. Who knew it’d all lead down to this? But the thing is, she can’t bring herself to regret a single day she ever spent with him. 

She’d wanted an adventure, and an adventure it had been, and as the raven comes after her, all she has time to say is:

“To die will be an awfully big adventure.”

#

She utters the words but she doesn’t die.

“ _No,_ ” Clara hears the Doctor tell her, like she once told him so long ago, “not yet.”

And then he pulls her out of the arms of death

#

They fight the Time Lords like how Peter Pan fought the pirates, and they escape with another TARDIS, laughing like they just stole the Jolly Rodger out from under Captain Hook’s nose.

But here’s something that Clara forgot about Peter and Wendy:

They don’t get to stay together.

#

Peter Pan is forgetting Wendy.

And Clara knows that this is how the story goes. That Wendy will die, and that Peter won’t. That they’ll be a thousand he flies off with, and one day a million years from now, he still won’t even have aged a day, and he won’t even be able to remember Wendy’s face.

But the story Clara read never told her how Peter Pan falls to the floor as he forgets Wendy, never said how the sheer amount of love in his blue eyes makes Wendy want to cry. Never said how he held onto her for as long as he could, staring at her in rapture like he’s seeing her for the first time and not the last.

“Don’t say goodbye,” she begs. “Never say goodbye, because goodbye means going away, and going away means forgetting.”

(But he has to say goodbye and she has to go away and he has to forget. The universe depends on it.) 

“Go on, smile for me, Clara Oswald,” he says, smiling up at her as she wraps her fingers around his wrist and presses his hand to her tear-stained cheek. “Don’t worry, I won’t forget it.”

He shuts his eyes, drifting away as she disappears from his mind, and Clara leans over him, and she knows - somehow, somehow, _somehow_ \- that in his dreams, he can hear her as she whispers:

“I’ll never be gone, not really. You know that place between sleep and awake, that place you still remember dreaming? That’s where I’ll always love you.”

And then she gives him back his kiss goodbye, slipping the thimble into his pocket, knowing one day he’ll find it.

#

Clara pilots her TARDIS with ease and thinks: _Thank goodness Peter taught Wendy to fly._

“Where are we headed?” Ashildr asks. 

“Death,” Clara answers. “Always death. But isn’t that where we’re all headed?”

Ashildr shifts where she stands, her arms falling to her sides like a pair of wings, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be, we don’t have time to waste.”

“Why?” Ashildr questions, looking bewildered. “Where are we going?”

“Death, like I said,” Clara says, and for a minute she looks solemn, but then she grins, wide and wild and free. “The long way around.”

Because here’s the secret:

Wendy is no longer Wendy. Wendy has become her own Peter Pan, an ageless girl made of stars. So she throws her head back and laughs, sets out for the sky, to see a hundred-and-one places she has yet to lay eyes on and to do a million things she hasn’t yet done.

And with stardust and lightning lighting up her eyes and promise filling her voice, Clara says:

“And to die will be an awfully big adventure.”

**Author's Note:**

> 1) In honor of her incredible arc on the show, Clara goes from  
> telling fairy tales, to being in one, to actually becoming one herself. 
> 
> 2) The title comes from Taylor Swift’s brand new song, Cardigan, from her folklore album that she just released at midnight. I had been planning on tackling another fairy tale first, but as soon as I heard the lyrics “I knew you tried to change the ending, Peter leaving Wendy,” (and saw her nearly Neverland-esque music video) I knew I had to immediately write a Peter Pan AU. I rushed to finish this fueled solely by feral folklore fangirling and the need to get it written within 24 hours of the song’s release! This is the quickest I’ve written a fic. 
> 
> 3) I’ve been a big Peter Pan fan since I was a little kid; I loved the Disney movie, and my Mom read the original novel out loud to me when I was six, so I worked hard to include a lot of quotes from/references to the book. (And, yes, I AM insinuating that Ashildr is the vengeful Tinker Bell. She’s already died like Tink and came back to life too.)
> 
> 4) If you’re on tumblr, come fangirl with me! My username’s: clara-oswin-oswald.
> 
> 5) If you like what I wrote, please leave a comment or kudos. ❤️


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